


Monochrome Dreams

by Six_Piece_Chicken_McNobody



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Prohibition Era, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2019-11-19
Packaged: 2021-02-13 08:31:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21491392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Six_Piece_Chicken_McNobody/pseuds/Six_Piece_Chicken_McNobody
Summary: Radiant Garden, 1928. Home of the prestigious Black Garden nightclub, a nationally-renowned arboretum, and the largest port in the northeast.Also home to the most prolific bootlegging operation this side of Dark City. As the youngest detective on the force, Eraqus has his work cut out for him.At least his prime suspect is kind enough to submit his own photographs.
Relationships: Braig & Xehanort (Kingdom Hearts), Eraqus & Yen Sid (Kingdom Hearts), Eraqus/Xehanort (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 19





	Monochrome Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> **UPDATE:** I vastly overestimated how much attention I'd be giving this project. Due to a lack of free time, and also generally losing interest in KH, this fic is now a one-shot. Sorry to anyone who was looking for more! I highly recommend checking out Rakiah's [Prohibition AU tag](https://kingdomcarrots.tumblr.com/tagged/Prohibition-AU) for more expansion on the story and characters.
> 
> Start with Rakiah's wonderful Xehaqus fan art, mix in some details from my own Flower Town series, add a generous dose of KH references and early 20th-century slang, and BOOM. We've got ourselves a Prohibition AU.
> 
> (Disclaimer: I'm not a history buff. Like...at all. Radiant Garden is loosely based on Boston, MA, because it's an area that I'm at least somewhat familiar with.)

_There’s no place finer than Bailey’s Diner! Enjoy the comfort of a home-cooked meal with speed and convenience, to accommodate your busy workweek. Creator of the award-winning cherryberry cobbler, and the only vendor of Rocket Soda in Radiant Garden! Proud partner of Morrid’s Coffeeshop. Come on in!_

The pink flyer—taped to the window of Bailey’s, corners fluttering against the glass like a moth—was more or less correct. There was no other place in the city where you could plunk yourself down and sizzle the enamel right off your teeth with a Rocket Soda and a slice of cherryberry cobbler. Morrid did sell his coffee beans here, as he did at every diner, café, and eatery north of the river. And while Bailey’s could hardly live up to its claim as the finest place in all of Radiant Garden, it was, at the very least, the nicest establishment on the block.

“How’s it comin’ along?” Braig called as he doused the chairs, tables, and floor with a bottle of cheap whiskey. Behind the counter, Xehanort poured out a bottle of his own and wrinkled his nose.

“I still don’t understand why we’re doing this.”

“Insurance, baby. This is fraud 101.”

“I mean _this_,” Xehanort said, holding up the half-empty bottle in his hand. “Why did we string up all that paper if we were just going to end up drenching the place with our product? We’re wasting our own time _and_ picking our own pockets here.”

“It’s peanuts compared to what we’ll be raking in. Besides, Mom said to free up some space in our inventory _and_ take care of a dry well this week. If I can kill two birds with one bottle, then hey—all the better.” Braig shook out the last few drops and returned the bottle to his bag. “Trust me,” he added with a laugh, “at the rate this panther piss has been selling, this is the only day in the limelight Skellington’s Whiskey is ever gonna have. Not like this watered-down crap is gonna light, anyway. Just think of it as pouring one out for this old joint.”

Xehanort shrugged and continued his work. It had been years since he’d set foot in Bailey’s as a customer, rather than a debt-collector. He still remembered the first meal he’d been able to afford here: a cup of chowder and half a turkey sandwich, with water. It was a laughably modest lunch, and the only full meal he’d eaten that day. But at the time, it was proof that he was finally on his way up, out of the long hours spent loading and unloading crates down at the docks. Pulling splinters from his palms with his teeth. Skipping meals altogether and foraging from food carts and fruit stands, stealing the items that were—like him—heavily bruised and unlikely to be missed.

But it had been a long time since Xehanort had handled anything crude enough to leave splinters. Bullets, maybe. Glass. Burns. But even those incidents were few and far between. Everything he touched these days—even in his most unsavory tasks—was sanded, tempered, polished, or spun.

So he worked carefully and took his time, as a small show of respect for the once fine establishment that he and Braig had put in a financial stranglehold over the past several months, until it had nothing left to yield.

Braig didn’t share his reverence. “Jesus,” he said, laughing in disbelief as he leaned over the counter. “Is that a fucking grid pattern? Just slosh it all over—who cares?”

Rather than wait for Xehanort to get it right, Braig took the bottle from him, dumping the rest of its contents in an unceremonious puddle on the floor. Xehanort stepped back to avoid getting any on his shoes. “I was _trying_ to distribute it evenly,” he said in his defense, though Braig hadn’t technically accused him of anything. “Diligence is a dying art.”

“Well, I’m with you on that, but the time to revive it is _not_ at three in the fuckin’ morning. I’m runnin’ on about two hours of sleep in as many days, so let’s go ahead and wrap this up, shall we?”

He shoved the bottle back into Xehanort’s hand and told him to go get the car warm while he finished up. Xehanort grimaced and reached for his handkerchief, cleaning the slick whiskey off his palms as he stepped outside.

Braig’s car—one of many—was parked in an alley across from Bailey’s, nestled safely in the darkness. The neighborhood was empty as could be, and even the lampposts barely glowed, but Xehanort crossed the street with a wary gait. As nervous as he felt to be out in the open on a job like this, sitting in a getaway car with no driver was worse. To mitigate both sources of anxiety, he awkwardly stood beside the car, watching Braig through the window of what would soon no longer be a diner.

The man was living up to his devil-may-care reputation, lighting the rolls of paper that hung above his head while he stood in a shallow pool of alcohol. He paused to take something out of his pocket; the glint of firelight revealed it to be the silver cigarette case Xehanort had given him several birthdays ago—on what he had to assume was Braig’s birthday, anyway. Like most people, he had no idea whether the date Braig had told him was correct, let alone what age the man was supposed to be. He acted younger but looked older than his superiors, and his pack-a-day habit didn’t do him any favors in that regard.

Still, Xehanort was nothing if not well-mannered, and he decided that even the genesis of Braig deserved some sort of commemoration. They tended to exchange more practical gifts nowadays, preferring to buy the flashy stuff on their own time, and on their own dime. But as Braig slipped the silver case back into his jacket, standing on his toes to light his cigarette before the burning paper curled too high to reach, Xehanort couldn’t help feeling a little touched that the man still used his gift.

Braig exited the diner with both hands in his pockets, walking so casually that for a moment, Xehanort thought he was about to start whistling. He crossed the street without looking one way or the other, reminding Xehanort that despite living in Radiant Garden for well over a decade, he was still nowhere near as attuned to it as Braig, and likely never would be. The man knew the patterns and police routes of this city like his body knew its own heartbeat.

He jerked his head toward the car when he noticed Xehanort waiting beside it. “Shake a leg, Bright Eyes,” he said around his cigarette, opening the driver’s side door and sliding in like a shadow. “Haven’t got all night.”

Xehanort pulled his hat lower as he got in, still cautious even under the cover of darkness and the roof of the car. Braig flicked the brim away from his eyes again as he settled into his seat. “Still embarrassed to be seen in public with me, huh?”

“Even in hell, I’ll be embarrassed to be seen with you.”

Braig chuckled and eased his car onto the main road, lingering just long enough to make sure the flames were spreading properly inside the diner. Xehanort took his hat off and set it on his lap, rather than readjust it and prove that Braig had successfully annoyed him. “By the way,” he said, “next time you feel like lighting up, would it kill you to wait until you’re _not_ standing in a river of alcohol?”

“Relax, kiddo. I’m a professional.”

Xehanort had heard those words of assurance a thousand times. He had yet to figure out exactly what kind of “professional” Braig purported to be.

They continued their slow crawl down the street until the diner started to glow orange in the side mirrors, and then Braig stepped on the gas and headed north. Two minutes until the next patrol car came by—more than enough time for Braig to make himself, Xehanort, and his own car disappear. He took a deep breath and sighed in satisfaction at a job well done.

Xehanort cleared his throat pointedly and rolled his window down, trying to disperse the sudden faceful of smoke. “Why they ban alcohol and not those vile things is beyond me,” he said, as if Braig had ever asked for his opinion on the matter. “At least when other people decide to get tanked, I don’t get secondhand drunk. Or in _your_ case, secondhand ‘hey, everyone, let’s watch me make an absolute jackass of myself by trying to steal the nickels out of the Seeburg!’”

“Would’ve gotten ‘em if you’d given me a few more minutes.”

“It’s _your_ _jukebox_. You have the _key_.”

Braig shrugged. “It’s more fun to steal.”

“It’s your munny either way at the end of the night. You were literally trying to steal from yourself.”

“Yeah, and that oughta tell you how much fun it is.”

Xehanort faced the open window, savoring the whiffs of fresh air whenever the car made a turn. “Well, I hope all those nickels cover the cost of fixing the thing. And until then, we’re stuck with whatever insipid music they’re playing on the radio these days.”

“What’re you talkin’ about? We still got the old Steinway in the corner. Just needs a tune-up and some light dusting, and then she’ll be ready to go.”

“Yeah, that’s exactly what our customer base wants: to guzzle down some questionable liquor while listening to your equally questionable repertoire.” Xehanort shook his head. “Paying off cops is one thing, but there’s no amount of munny that’ll get people to turn a blind eye—a deaf ear, rather—if you decide to fill the entire fucking speakeasy with ragtime.”

“_Christ_, you’re in a mood. I’ll have the juke up and running by the end of the day, good as new, if it’ll get you to fuckin’ relax already. You know I don’t break things I can’t fix. ‘Specially if they’re mine.”

Xehanort kept gazing out the window, looking ahead at where the street opened up to run side-by-side with the river. As they drove along its edge and heard the dark water rushing below, Braig said, “What’s got your goat tonight, anyway?”

Xehanort didn’t answer at first, reluctant to bring up an issue that Braig was already well aware of and, frankly, a little sick of hearing about. But Braig had a way of drawing answers out of people, whether they planned to share them or not. So Xehanort said, “Just this whole arrangement. It’s so…convoluted. We wouldn’t have bothered with any of this before. We would have hurled a lit bottle through the window, found some way to pin it on a rival crew, and called it a night.”

Braig clucked his tongue admonishingly. “Can’t do that anymore,” he said in a scolding, singsong voice. “We’re all one happy family now.”

“Now,” Xehanort went on, as if Braig hadn’t spoken, “we’re doing twice the legwork and incurring twice the risk. And whose pockets will this munny end up lining? Yours and mine? Or Mom’s and Xemnas’s?”

“Well, Mom’s, _duh_,” Braig said. “It’s his diner. Or it was, anyway. And yeah, Xemnas is gonna take his share. Plus, Ansem gets a cut, too, if only for being so gosh-darned pretty.”

“All I’m saying is that it’s not doing right by us. We’ve worked for Mom for years—we know he’s more than capable of managing business himself. But Xemnas takes one little step into bootlegging, and suddenly they’re partners?”

“Funny ol’ world, innit?”

“It’s absurd,” Xehanort insisted. “He practically co-owns Radiant Garden now. He’s not even from here.”

“So? Neither are you.”

“Neither are _you_,” Xehanort shot back, and without missing a beat, Braig said, “Prove it.”

Silence fell on the car for the next few blocks, broken only by the soft _whoosh_ of tires on damp pavement and the timeless flow of the river beside them. Everyone Xehanort knew in Radiant Garden had either always lived here, or else moved to the city in their teens or early twenties like him, seeking an opportunity to “become” somebody.

Everyone but Braig. He had simply shown up out of the blue one day, lodging himself in the city like a stray bullet. And as far as Xehanort knew, no one had ever managed to track down the entry wound.

“Still,” was all Xehanort could say. “It’s not right.”

“Well, suck it up, buttercup. It’s how things are.”

“And it’s that easy? It doesn’t bother you, at all?”

“Hey, you know me. I can adapt to anything.”

“Yeah? Then how about you quit smoking?”

“Don’t feel like it.”

“How convenient.”

Braig took a long, slow drag, sighed heavily to fill the car with as much smoke as he could, then rolled his window down and flicked the half-finished cigarette out into the night. It hit the street with a small burst of orange embers, a crime scene in miniature. “There,” he said as Xehanort waved his hand, trying to thin the cancerous cloud. “Happy?”

“Relatively.”

“That was my last one, too,” Braig muttered, glancing in the rearview mirror as if he were considering turning around to go get it. “Supposed to be able to smoke in my own damn car. Those’re the rules.”

“Oh, yes,” Xehanort said, studying the vehicle’s mismatched doors and stolen detachable roof. “This car runs on rules and order, doesn’t it?”

He couldn’t see Braig’s good eye, but Xehanort could tell he was rolling it. “You’re a piece of work, y’know that? You whine on and on about getting short-changed, and then you sit here and make fun of _me_ for being thrifty while you go out and throw your munny away on some ritzy deluxe. In eye-catching, McIntosh-apple _red_, of _course_.”

“So what if I did? Haven’t I earned the right to enjoy my wealth a bit?”

“You’ve got the right to do whatever you want,” Braig said, and seemed to mean it. “But if that’s really how you feel, then why’s it bother you so much that I _don’t_? I’m thinkin’ you’re just jealous that you forked your munny over for a car with essentially the same functionality as my little jalopy here. And I put this baby together at half the price, with nothing but some mechanical know-how, resourcefulness, and my willingness to dig around scrap yards like a rat.”

Xehanort closed his eyes for a moment, trying not to entertain that visual. It wasn’t _what_ Braig had said, so much as the fact that he’d said it with such self-satisfied glee. It was as if everything he worked for in life served no greater purpose than his own amusement—and his alone. He was like a bad comedian, laughing at his own jokes amid a sea of groans. And yet, he never got the hook.

“Do you have _any_ dignity?” Xehanort asked. “Truly?”

“Sure I do,” Braig said cheerfully, “and good luck finding it. We don’t all keep ours in our wallets where any half-rate thief can nick it.”

“There _is_ a middle ground between top-of-the-line and bottom-of-the-barrel, you know. You should’ve just bought a roadster utility in the first place. You have the munny, and they aren’t _that_ much more expensive than this slapdash excuse for a car.”

“Jesus, how many times I gotta go over this with you? Stealing. Is. _Fun_.” Braig drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, as if to demonstrate how much more fun his car was than a standard model. When he noticed Xehanort’s attention drifting, Braig reeled him back in with a final bit of unasked-for wisdom. “Besides, you’re more likely to make something last if you put the work in yourself. If you’re countin’ on someone else to provide, then you’re gonna get suckered in by every shiny new thing they roll off the assembly line, aren’t ya?”

Xehanort dropped the subject, knowing once again that he couldn’t out-argue his partner on this one. Braig wasn’t like Mom, and he wasn’t like Xemnas. He wasn’t even like Ansem. He didn’t build establishments and crews and grow them into empires—he didn’t build _anything_. He salvaged and scavenged. Sometimes inherited. He took what he could, he tweaked and tinkered and transformed, and then, when the need arose, he let it all go as if it had never been his. He was impervious to the sunk cost fallacy, as well he should be. A man who had kept his head above water for this many years knew better than to hold onto anything—or anyone—that posed a risk of sinking.

When they turned a more familiar corner, and Xehanort finally felt safe enough to stop keeping watch out the window, he reassessed the car’s smoke-damaged but dust-free interior. He wouldn’t be caught dead owning a clunker like this, but he silently resolved never to make fun of Braig’s old hayburner again. A piece of junk owned outright was better than anything driven on borrowed miles.

He glanced at Braig, getting a good look at his most prominent scar from where he sat. It wasn’t particularly gory, just impossible to ignore due to its placement—striking through his eye like a lightning bolt, pale and merciless, ruining his vision and splitting what Braig mourned as his favorite eyebrow in half. The eye itself was intact, milky and useless and all the more unnerving for it. But after seven years in the man’s company, it barely registered on Xehanort’s radar anymore.

Braig hadn’t spoken for a few minutes, and Xehanort could see his weariness even in his blighted eye. He looked out the windshield again, at a skyline that was barely visible in the night. Gently, his annoyance melted away. Radiant Garden was dark and quiet, and whatever grievances he had would still be there to annoy him in the daytime. Why let them bother him now?

Especially when he had a much more favorable task at hand.

“Hey. How long has it been since you’ve slept?”

“Comin’ up on twenty-eight hours now,” Braig said through a stifled yawn, prompted by the mere mention of sleep. Xehanort shook his head again.

“I don’t know how you do it.”

“Coffee and determination. That’s the only secret to anything. Cuppa Joe and sheer, undiluted force of will.”

They were getting close to their usual district. Once they crossed the invisible line into Xehanort’s comfort zone, he said, “Think you can go twenty-nine hours?”

“What for? Got another job to do?”

“Not a job. More like…a standing appointment.”

Braig furrowed his brow. “At this hour?”

“Well, I’m overdue,” Xehanort said, a smile creeping into his voice despite his attempt to stay casual. “I’ve established a schedule; it’s only polite to keep it.”

“Ahh…that time again, huh?”

“I think I’m finally getting somewhere,” Xehanort replied, sounding pleased with himself. “We crossed paths at Le Grand Bistrot last weekend, and he wouldn’t even look my way.”

“Shit, you must be getting to him after all. He never passes up the chance to ruin a perfectly pleasant meal.”

Xehanort grinned, but when he caught Braig stifling another yawn, he added, “You don’t have to, of course. I’m sure I can figure out how to set the camera timer myself.”

Braig glanced at his watch. “Ehh…I can swing it. You sure you’re keen on being photographed at four in the morning, though? Not exactly your most flattering hour.”

Xehanort gave him a smile, tired but smug. “Well, it’s not like you’ll be photographing my face.”

Braig snorted. “True. So, your place, or mine?”

“Neither.” Xehanort nodded at an upcoming side street. “Home.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh, yes. I need to get nice and drunk for this.”

“Hey, now you’re talkin’,” Braig said, the promising task ahead of them doing more to boost his alertness than any amount of caffeine could. He drove down the familiar route to the Dice ’n’ Shine, but before they reached their modest speakeasy, Xehanort tapped Braig’s shoulder and pointed to a store on the corner, lit up just enough to display the “OPEN 24 HOURS” sign in the window.

“Pull over a sec.”

Braig groaned, though he rolled up to the curb and parked just outside the door. “You’re on the clock, you know. I’m takin’ this outta your cut.”

“Relax, will you?” Xehanort said, pushing his hair back and placing his hat on top of his head again. “This stop’s for you, Smokestack.” When Braig raised his eyebrows, Xehanort said, “You’re sacrificing an hour of sleep for my entertainment. The least I can do is buy you a pack of cigarettes to say thanks.”

Braig, as he so rarely did, looked surprised, but he quickly waved away Xehanort’s generosity with a flippant, “Ah, c’mon. No you’re not.”

Xehanort paused, but before he could either rescind his offer or insist upon it, Braig added, “You’re buyin’ me _two_,” and shoved him out the door.

* * *

Radiant Garden’s police station was a place of constant activity, bordering on disarray. The icy-sharp _brrriiing_ of a telephone was followed by the crisp, clear voice of a well-trained dispatcher, smothering her stress with a mask of professionalism. Shoes clip-clopped up and down the hallways, intercut by the squeaky wheels of the mail cart. Folders were so overstuffed that they shed paper like molting archravens whenever they were passed from one department to another.

That was morning for you: the clean-shaven and put-together losing their composure as soon as they stepped through the door, desperately trying to catch up to the mayhem that was inflicted overnight in their beloved city.

But some people knew how to find order in the chaos. Every morning, at 10:24 a.m., a bubble of quiet descended on the nearly empty breakfast table. And every morning, at 10:24 a.m. _precisely_, Yen Sid made his move.

He left his office like a tortoise poking its head out of its shell. But he hadn’t been _hiding_, of course. He had arrived early and conquered the mountain of paperwork on his desk by mid-morning. He had accomplished more in a few hours than most of his coworkers did all day.

He had _earned_ his egg bagel with orange marmalade.

Everyone else had helped themselves to the food by now, and what little remained was already cold and a bit stale. But it was a small price to pay to avoid the crowd and accompanying small talk, of which Yen Sid had never been a fan. Small talk, in his enduring opinion, was the kind of social frill that was best reserved for Sundays—more specifically, for church and sisters-in-law. Weekdays were for important conversations, both at the precinct and at home, such as dividing up the chores and errands with Fauna or helping the girls with their schoolwork. As for the rest of his time, Yen Sid could happily spend it in blissful, wordless silence.

He selected his bagel—the last one, same as always—and held a paper coffee cup in his teeth as he scoured the tray for a packet of marmalade. He missed the hell out of his World’s Best Dad mug, which had been a surprise, “just because” gift from his daughters. Snow had chosen it, Rose had purchased it (with munny passed to her from Fauna’s purse), Ella had wrapped it with a bow, and all three of them had given it to their father on his last birthday with unabashed pride and glee.

And some overburdened intern, unable to see past the stack of record books in his arms, had jostled the mug from Yen Sid’s hands last week and sent it crashing to the floor.

It was a hard but necessary lesson in practicality over sentimentality. He shouldn’t have brought the mug to work in the first place, because of _course_ it could never have survived in this world. Of course both the natural and manufactured entropy of the Radiant Garden police station would see to it that his cherished mug met an untimely end, shattered to bits on the linoleum, a scene deserving of its own chalk outline and yellow tape.

The intern had gone pale when he finally managed to see what he’d done, sputtering profuse apologizes over the stack of papers that grew more unstable by the moment. And Yen Sid, the eternally reasonable and patient father figure to just about everyone under the age of thirty-five, had no choice but to tell the boy that accidents happened, and that it was all right.

He had spent a good chunk of his afternoon that day trying to fix it, but it was a lost cause. He suspected that it wasn’t particularly safe to drink out of a cup held together with so much glue, anyway. He still didn’t have the heart to tell his kids.

As Yen Sid focused on spreading his marmalade, a strangled shout erupted from one of the offices, like a frustrated groan and a cry of distress fused together. It was followed by a series of squeaks as a hapless assistant jogged the mail cart down the hall, not knowing what had just gone wrong, but knowing that he must have had some unwilling part to play in it. He took off around the corner like a messenger who had been shot at one too many times.

_Speaking of children_, Yen Sid thought, then scolded himself for thinking it. Both the fleeing mailman and the detective throwing a fit in his office were valued members of the team. The former had simply been caught off guard by the latter, who was apparently in desperate need of stress relief. Once he got it out of his system—

Across the hall, the door to Eraqus’s office flew open, and he emerged with a large envelope in his hand. He raised it above his head and proclaimed with ruthless, vengeful justice, “HE’S GONE TOO FAR.”

Yen Sid focused harder on his bagel, trying to spread the marmalade more quickly without sacrificing evenness. But despite his best attempt to mind his own business, Eraqus was already on his way over.

“Yen Sid!” he called, as if his superior could have possibly missed the announcement. Yen Sid responded with a calm, “Mhmm?” which came out more like an _nhhnn_ thanks to the paper cup still pinched between his teeth.

“This is an _outrage_,” Eraqus went on, waving the envelope like it held an accusation. “Something must be _done_.”

Yen Sid took the cup out of his mouth, filled it with coffee, wrapped his bagel in a napkin, and gestured to the open door across the hall. “Let’s step into your office.”

“I mean it,” Eraqus said, following Yen Sid back to his own office and ranting the entire way. “This is _it_. I’m at my breaking point. We need to apprehend him _immediately_, before he strikes again!”

Once inside, Yen Sid placed his food on top of a filing cabinet and shut the door. “Now, I don’t have to tell you how concerning it is that you respond to these little deliveries by demanding permission to take this man into custody. Correct?”

Eraqus fumed, but at least he fumed silently this time. Yen Sid held his hand out. “May I?”

With a scoff, Eraqus passed the envelope to him. “If you think you can stomach it.”

“I’ve seen more stomach-turning sights in this line of work than whatever’s in here, I can assure you,” Yen Sid replied as he opened the envelope and slid its contents out of hiding.

As expected, this week’s photo was a little racier than last week's, just like last week’s had been racier than the one before. It had all started simply enough: a headshot of the man in his coat and hat, standing in some nondescript location, with a glint in his eyes but nothing to suggest that anything untoward had taken place. When Eraqus received that first photo, all those weeks ago, he and Yen Sid had puzzled over it for days. Was it meant to be some kind of message? A threat? An honest mix-up at the post office? In the end, they had shrugged, filed the picture in Xehanort’s fairly slim folder, and put it out of their minds.

But each week, a new photo arrived, and with each photo, a layer of clothing was lost. First, the hat, lifted from his head in an infuriatingly polite manner. Next was a single white glove, pulled off slowly—_coquettishly_ was the word that leapt to mind, before Yen Sid had been able to stop it—by teeth bared in a smug grin. After that came a shucked jacket. A loosened tie. And so on, and so forth. Even Yen Sid, old-fashioned almost to a fault, had to admit that the process was painstakingly slow, and he couldn’t imagine that the time investment would be worth the end result.

Not that he spent much time thinking about this sort of thing.

For today’s delivery, however, Xehanort had done away with his hat, gloves, coat, tie, waistcoat, and shirt. The latest installment in this unasked-for series featured the man in a plain undershirt, half-hiked up his torso, while his hands made a show of sliding his belt free. As usual with these more recent…offerings, his face was kept out of frame.

Well, mostly out of frame. Whoever the photographer was, he always ensured that Xehanort’s smile made it into the shot.

With ease, Yen Sid tore his gaze away from the focus of the piece and noticed a message written in the corner: _Catch me if you can_, followed by a heart with an arrow shot through it. If nothing else could be said about the man, at least his penmanship was improving.

“He’s _taunting_ me,” Eraqus said, unable to bear Yen Sid’s silent scrutiny any longer.

“I believe the term is ‘courting,’” Yen Sid replied, which earned him such a wrathful look from Eraqus that he almost felt insulted by it. He didn’t often use humor to defuse situations; he found it inappropriate in their line of work. But when he did try his unskilled hand at comedy, he expected at least some appreciation for the effort.

“Look,” he began in his most calm and reasonable dad voice, which only seemed to annoy Eraqus further. “You’re still relatively new here. In time, you’ll learn that there are always people like this.” Yen Sid laid the photo down on Eraqus’s desk. “Our work is their playground—they get a kick out of making it personal. Think about how pleased he’d be to know that his little stunts are having the intended effect. Don’t give him that satisfaction.”

Eraqus frowned, almost pouting, because he knew Yen Sid was right. As if to validate his feelings, or maybe even lighten the mood, Yen Sid added, “Don’t misunderstand me, though.” He reached down and tapped the picture twice. “This is freaky stuff. I don’t envy you one bit.”

“Thank you,” Eraqus said dryly. “That’s very reassuring.”

Yen Sid shrugged. “We live in a city half-run by criminals—and that’s a conservative estimate. You’re in the wrong place for reassurance.”

Eraqus nodded, already well aware of that, and despite what he'd just said, Yen Sid felt the urge to try and reassure him anyway. He didn’t mind doling out blunt, shock-of-cold-water style life lessons, but it always deflated him a bit to see Eraqus accept them so easily. It reinforced Yen Sid’s burgeoning belief that the world would be much easier if people learned to expect dissatisfaction—but a little less bright.

Before he could even begin to think of a way to lift Eraqus’s spirits, someone knocked on the door. “Come in,” Yen Sid said as Eraqus snatched the photo off his desk.

A frazzled assistant poked her head into the room. “Sorry to interrupt. Your wife called, sir. She said…” The young woman fished a note out of her pocket and smoothed it against the doorjamb. “She said ‘it’s _not_ an emergency, but it’s very urgent, you see. But _not_ an emergency. So tell him not to worry. But please make sure he calls me as soon as possible. The girls are fine.’”

“Thank you,” Yen Sid said, trying not to smile. The woman nodded and dismissed herself, and when the door was shut again, Yen Sid turned back to Eraqus. His protégé was putting the photo in the bottom drawer of his desk, the only drawer that locked. He could have—or possibly _should_ have—filed it in evidence, but Yen Sid let it slide. Eraqus walked a tightrope at this station already, and there were certain spotlights that he didn’t need to go casting on himself. Some of them, like his relatively brief work history or his heritage, shone on him no matter what he did. Others, like his…interpersonal inclinations, were easier to avoid.

Besides, filing these little calling cards in evidence would beg the question of what they were evidence _of_. And while Yen Sid kept his mouth shut about it, he was starting to think that the only thing more revealing than the photos themselves was Eraqus’s reaction to them.

“Well,” he said, as casually as he could, “it sounds like I have my own predicament to attend to. Will you be all right if I go and see to it?”

Eraqus rolled his eyes and pulled a small stack of paperwork toward him. “I think I’ll manage.”

Yen Sid nodded, gathered his breakfast—now sufficiently cooled—and retreated to the comfort of his own office. He sat at his desk, ate half his bagel, washed it down with some truly disappointing coffee, then picked up the phone and dialed.

Fauna answered on the second ring, with a pleasant and inquisitive, “Hello?”

Yen Sid’s stress levels were reduced by fifty percent at the sound of his wife's voice. She had a natural musicality, turning common words into charming tunes, infusing a soft lisp into letters where it should have had no business being. It was, without question, the most delightful and soothing sound Yen Sid had ever heard.

“It’s me, dear. What’s the matter?”

“Oh! Oh, it’s dreadful—absolutely _dreadful_. Did you realize our entire _street_ lost power last night? Some sort of malfunction with the, the—oh, I don’t know, I have no idea how these things _work_, let alone how they _break_. And of course they sorted it out by the time everyone woke up, but you’d really think they would have the courtesy to _tell_ people. Because when I went to fix breakfast this morning—well, there, you see? Maybe if you ever sat down and ate a decent meal _before_ you went to work, we would've noticed it sooner—”

“What exactly is the problem, Fauna?” Yen Sid asked, barely able to keep a chuckle out of his voice. Fauna drew a deep breath and sighed.

“It’s the refrigerator," she lamented. “I don’t know how this big, hulking machine is hooked up, but it never turned back on! Brand new—well, as close as we could get—and it can’t even keep one measly bottle of milk cold while the power’s out. I don’t know why we bother with the—the _darn_ thing. We might as well sell it and go back to the ice box, for all the good it’s doing.”

Yen Sid stretched his arm out, pulling his sleeve off his watch so he could check the time. “Did no one notice until now?”

“…well…Snow said the milk _did_ taste a little funny this morning. But you know she’s such a picky eater these days. And I was busy upstairs, anyway, trying to help Ella get dressed—oh, the poor dear is growing so _fast_, we’re going to have to replace those shoes of hers before the school year’s over—”

“So, what am I picking up on my way home?” Yen Sid asked, gently reeling the conversation back to the immediate problem, and letting his daughters’ various growth spurts and food hang-ups be an issue for another day.

“_Everything_,” Fauna said, exasperated. “_Everything_ needs to be replaced. The eggs, the milk, the bacon—oh, the _pie_!” she added despairingly. “For Flora’s birthday! Oh, just _look_ at it.” Yen Sid tried his hardest to visualize it in his mind’s eye. “It’s gone all _mushy_, and _collapsed_, and—oh, goodness, what a _mess_.”

“I’m sure Flora will be perfectly content with a pie from the store,” Yen Sid said, wisely keeping to himself that she’d prefer any store-bought dessert over one of her sister’s disastrous baking attempts. “Anything else?”

“No, no, just whatever you can think of—oh, _ick_, the _meatloaf_—”

“Just throw it out; I’ll do a full grocery run after work.”

“Hah, throw it out? I think we need to _bury_ this thing, and perform funeral rites for it—oh, it’s _putrid_! Oof. Ah, well…there goes tonight’s meal, I suppose. Would you pick up something for us, then, while you’re out?”

“Of course.”

“Enough for six? Merryweather’s stopping by to help clean up and make sure there’s nothing wrong with the contraption, and I think it would be nice if we invited her to stay for dinner.”

“…of course.”

They finalized the shopping list and said a pair of quick good-byes before hanging up. As Yen Sid finished his cold breakfast, he couldn’t help wondering why his coworkers found it so difficult to have _normal_ problems, like broken coffee mugs or too much marmalade on their bagels. Brief power outages. Pushy but well-meaning sisters-in-law. Daughters who outgrew their shoes just a bit faster than expected.

He drained the rest of his coffee, then balled up the napkin and stuffed it into the empty cup. He leaned back in his chair, and with an easy overhand toss, he sent the self-contained bundle of paper products across the room and into the trash where it belonged. His kitchen may have been full of spoiled food, and his coworker's desk may have been full of photos of a half-dressed criminal. But at least Yen Sid could still bring neatness and order to one small part of this chaotic universe.

**Author's Note:**

> A HUGE thank you again to Rakiah for letting me write a story based on your art. It's always a pleasure to collaborate <3
> 
> (I have no idea why I decided to start this story with a random Seinfeld reference. Feel free to ignore that.)


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